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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28304589">Nothing Is Sacred</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/MajorMinor/pseuds/MajorMinor'>MajorMinor</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>marvel characters i'll never get to make comic canon [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Revenge</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 14:49:12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,730</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28304589</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/MajorMinor/pseuds/MajorMinor</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Mercedes lived her life out of spite. Her father never wanted her out of his eyesight, so she spent as much time away from him as she could. Math teacher told her she'd never be any good, so she took an AP course and passed. Archery teacher told her she'd never be any good because she's half blind, so she finds someone that can teach her. Turns out retired carnies with a mysterious past have a lot of free time on their hands. So much in fact, that he'd help her track down her father's killer.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Barney Barton &amp; Clint Barton, Clint Barton &amp; Kate Bishop, Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>marvel characters i'll never get to make comic canon [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2073084</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>got angry about mcu hawkeye/ronin again and would not rest until i wrote this fic where i take those g-d awful happenings in the mcu and make them into something slightly interesting by way of a black girl getting revenge.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>
    <span>July 2020</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It was in an episode of </span>
  <em>
    <span>Hoarders </span>
  </em>
  <span>she had watched last year when she should have been studying. The one sign of a hoarder is curtains or blinds pressed up against the windows, or pungent smells radiating from the inside of the house. Dad’s house didn’t have the latter, thank fuck, but the windows were the dead give away. Though in his defense, the stuff he had pressing against his windows had served a purpose, and she wanted to pull her hair out and scream even louder than she was for only just now realizing what it was. An extra layer of protection. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was impossible to get those windows open, Mercedes knew, she’d tried so many nights as a kid, trying to get the fuck out of the house, away from all of the locks and layers, and her father. Her neighbor told her once that Mercedes was his most prized possession, and that he saw his house as a trophy case. It was too morbid for it to be considered a euphemism. Even her own mother didn’t want to be locked away in that shack of a house. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>All those years locked away, and she finally managed to figure out how to get away from it all, even if for a couple hours; she shared in his delusions. Some freedom came with high school, though it was not so much given, but rather snatched. One day she decided she had had enough, and just started leaving. Despite all of the hell and high water her father had given her about “the people” that were supposedly always coming for them, he never once noticed that she was starting to spend less and less time at home. Or if he did he never said anything. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tonight had been one of those nights. She was bored, and wanted out. The same as any other weekday evening so far that summer. So she pulled on a pair of pants, changed into a (mostly) clean t-shirt, and quickly made her way to the back door. It was a lot of effort to get in and out of the house. All of the windows were boarded, and the doors were dead bolted. The back door in particular was the hardest, seeing as it was blocked by a bookshelf and Mercedes had to go past her father’s bedroom to get there. But, he had been in the living room, television blasting, and as far as she could tell, he had been asleep for hours now. Cake walk. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Which was why it was all the more alarming that the back door was wide open when she got back home. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The door handle was kicked in, but clearly that hadn’t done the trick. So the perpetrator had used a knife, which had been left on the back patio steps, to break inside. Mercedes ran inside, tripping over the bookshelf she had shimmied past effortlessly more times than she could count, and bolted down the hall into the living room. They hadn’t even given her father enough time to get off of the couch before creating a mess of blood spray across the wall and carpet. The bile on her father’s chest was Mercedes’ signature to the morbid scene. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Whoever had been inside had been there a while. Either that or they worked with something sharper than what any common thief could get their hands on in Home Depot or the Home Goods kitchenware aisle. The skin holding together his neck and head was barely any thicker than her thumb, but it had held on for however many minutes or hours since the bastard broke in. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Hours.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Her hands shook furiously at her sides. She’d gone to the movies, she’d gone to the movies because she couldn’t stand to think about the steps she’d taken to land her back into the house she had hated so much as a child. Three hours. The blood wasn’t running from his wound. If she had just stayed ten minutes longer to put on makeup, or taken a few minutes longer to pick a song to listen to before walking up the street, maybe he’d still be alive. Or maybe she’d be in her bedroom, door broken open, a duplicate scene flowing down the hall and into the only clean room of the house. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It took less than a second for the scream to leave her mouth. </span>
</p><hr/>
<p>
  <span>The neighbors had heard her screaming. Her broken, wounded animal cries echoed through all of the defenses that hadn’t done a damn thing to save her father. When the cops showed up, they couldn’t find a single shred of useful evidence to justify any further investigation. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The scene’s too contaminated to get any good prints,” the investigator had told her, after two days of a CSI team combing the house. Whoever had killed her father had also taken the liberties of throwing rubbing alcohol across every surface they might have touched. It had been a messy job, given the patches of both the smell and puddles from the back door and into the living room, but it was enough to halt North Carolina’s finest. “Best thing in my opinion, just lay him to rest. Better to anyway. It wasn’t like he’d lived a life of comfort. It’s what he’d want.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What he’d want is for you to get your hands off his things,” Mercedes had said, not bothering to look at the cop. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They didn’t bother because her father was a nobody. He was just a paranoid recluse, too poor to afford the help he needed, and too unremarkable to cause this big of a murder. But clearly he hadn’t been. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>According to the only shred of evidence that Mercedes had taken as her neighbors frantically dialed 911, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Swordsman</span>
  </em>
  <span> had thought her father was that important. And they were stupid enough to leave their name etched into the hilt of the knife that put them into a house they were about to be very sorry they ever entered. </span>
</p><hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>This was the thing no one knew about Mercedes, she lived to spite people. Her math teacher told her she wouldn’t pass, so she did, and took the AP course the following year. Bully said she could never beat her in a fight, so she got into fights until she could. Coach said she’d never be good because she was half blind, so she did every sport until she found something she was good at. Turns out archery is less eyesight and more physics. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Also turned out it’s pretty easy to learn how to shoot when you strong arm the former carney living up the street into teaching you lessons.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You should’ve called me sooner,” Barney said, sliding a mug of coffee across the table. It had been three weeks since her father had been murdered. Barney had called her the day after, not because he had known about her dad, but because she had missed her lesson for the day. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>In the two years that she’d known him, Mercedes never missed a lesson. It had been too much work for her to get someone to finally teach her </span>
  <em>
    <span>some</span>
  </em>
  <span> sort of sport for her to go skipping lessons. She’d been at the local recreation center, trying to argue her way into lessons with the instructor, but was turned down because of her eyesight, and, the more importantly, her father’s lack of funds. Barney just so happened to overhear, walked up to the instructor, told him he was an idiot for not wanting to teach someone so eager to learn. It would have ended at that if Mercedes hadn’t chased him out to his car and just about bullied him into giving her lessons, “Since you seem to know so damn much,” she’d said. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Barney gave a humorless laugh, rubbed his temples, and said, “G-d, you two are the exact fucking same,” before sighing, and saying, “Fine. I’ll teach you. Four o’clock Friday, or whatever time you get out of school. You can use my old bow for now, but you’ve gotta get a job at some point during the summer and pay for your own gear.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She made him shake on it, and that was that. He never asked for payment, never asked why she was learning, and until three weeks ago, never missed a lesson. Even after she started spending more time with him outside of lessons after she graduated and didn’t have eight hours of school to keep her out of her father’s house, the most she knew about him now was his name, his address, and that he was an orphan. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Cremating is a lot more work than you’d think,” Mercedes said, taking the mug and taking a generous sip. She’d barely been sleeping, and was barely going home at all the past few weeks. She hated Barney’s coffee, not just because it was a shit brew, but because she hated the empty sort of energy it gave her. Alert, but just on the fringes. Enough to keep her awake, but not quite enough so she could focus on her surroundings. It was like looking down a straw and not feeling someone coming behind her until it was too late. But it was also the first time she’d had anything that didn’t come from the McDonald’s Dollar Menu in between meetings with the funeral home that was doing the cremation and staving off her neighbors. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I mean you could’ve come to stay with me,” he said, “Where the hell have you been?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Where the hell else do I have to go,” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well, if you ate pork, I’d say the police,” he paused, noticed the way he’d phrased that, and started to correct himself, but Mercedes shook her head. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I know what you mean, but no thank you. Even if those guys gave a shit, they wouldn’t really give a shit. One less dude they’ve gotta deal with,” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Barney sighed, “You’re right, but it’s not really healthy for you to stay in there Mercy,” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Mercy, Mercy me. You’ve gotten so big.</span>
  </em>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Don’t call me that,” she snapped.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Sorry, I forgot. Has she-”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No. I don’t think she knows,” Mercy said sharply. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Okay well, if she does, and you need anybody,” he rattled on the usual ``I'm</span>
  <em>
    <span> here if you need me”, </span>
  </em>
  <span>that he had given her so many times before. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Try as he might, Mercedes knew one of the reasons he had kept giving her lessons was because he pitied her. </span>
  <em>
    <span>G-d, you two are the exact fucking same. </span>
  </em>
  <span>She never learned who exactly he was referencing, but knew that the resemblance between herself and the mystery person had to be a reason he stuck around. It was part of the reason she hadn’t initially gone to him until today. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She couldn’t do this alone any longer, and now that her father’s final plans were in place, she could properly start on doing her own investigating. Because despite Barney’s insistence that he was just a washed up carney with his own demons that needed concussing, she knew he was more. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She sighed, downed the rest of her coffee, and reached into her backpack leaning against her chair, from which she took out the knife she’d taken from the scene, wrapped in parchment paper inside of a Ziploc bag. “I know you’ve got some mysterious past, that’s probably really violent, which is why you probably never told me about it. But I’ve been doing some digging Barney,” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His gaze was locked firmly with hers, not yet acknowledging the knife in front of him“And what’d you find?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I found you. Retired carney? That might be true. But it’s also ridiculously easy to find old army files. Not a lotta people running around with your skill sets,” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You googled me?” he asked, the hint of a laugh hanging on his words, “Why?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She flicked her eyes from the knife and back to him. “That’s a throwing knife. Typically used in circus performances. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Swordsman</span>
  </em>
  <span> is too flashy of a name to be used by some random thief, unless they stole it from you,”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Barney slowly nodded his head and reached for the bag. He opened it, and inspected the knife for a few moments. He held it like it was more fragile than it was. She concluded that it was the memory brought to the front of his mind by the knife that he was nursing so gently. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She didn’t think he killed her dad. There wouldn’t be any reason to. To outsiders, it might have looked a bit suspicious that a middle aged white guy was teaching a nineteen year old black girl (who he had met when she was just a few weeks shy of legality) a sport that nobody except Olympians or </span>
  <em>
    <span>Hunger Games</span>
  </em>
  <span> fans gave a shit about. But Barney was a genuine person, with genuine motives for teaching her; he thought she was good. Neither of them knew what that skill would do for her in life, but it was enough to keep their relationship strong two years down the line. There wasn’t any ulterior motive to get her to do some fucked up carney crimes or to sleep with him. They just liked to shoot together. It made as much sense for him to kill her as an empty water bottle in a desert. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Barney put the knife on the table and sighed. “They didn’t steal it from me,” he said, “they stole it from the man who taught me,” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Any idea who the thief could be?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah. My little brother.” </span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>
    <span>Charlotte, North Carolina to Hudson Valley, New York</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>596 Miles</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Start Time: 4:34 PM</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>ETA: 1:34 AM</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>"Go home, pack a bag. We'll wait a little after rush hour to leave," Barney had said. Mercedes wanted to ask more, but he hadn't given her the chance. So, she did as he instructed, and walked home alone, opting to not block out the noise of her commute with Spotify as she usually did. There were enough thoughts bouncing around her head to replace the noise. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>So Barney had a brother? Not surprising. Mercedes figured Barney had to have had some family floating in the ether. It wasn’t like he got his reclusive personality and barely tackled personal demons from nowhere. A possibly murderous brother who had a vendetta against a mentally ill black man? That was a problem. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The bigger problem was why the hell he would’ve gone after her father in the first place. As far as she knew, he was, well, just a mentally ill black man. She knew there had been a military career before she was born, but he never talked about it aside from muttering on and on about “his glory days” from time to time. She never thought anything of it, especially after he was hospitalized in 2018 after the battle in Wakanda. He had gone off the deep end again, talking about how he had known some of the people that were fighting. Mercedes had tried her best to quell him, but there was only so much she could do. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>One short walk to the mailbox, and one even shorter psychotic hallucination later, and the neighbors had called 911. Mercedes had to guard the house from the outside to keep the EMTs from forcing their way in and make a bad situation worse. He was hospitalized for a week,  and that was how Mercedes ended up inviting Barney to her high school graduation so she wouldn’t have to show up alone. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And now, the only stable adult figure in her life (well, aside from herself), was possibly connected to her dad’s murder by way of his possibly murderous brother. Great. Somehow the repeat alien invasions over the course of the last ten years was less mind boggling. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Once she was inside the house, she shoved a week’s worth of clothes, toiletries, and the cash she kept stashed in her sock drawer from the tips she’d collected over the years into her duffel bag. Barney had told her to expect to be gone for a few days, a week at most. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We don’t know what we’re walking into,” he would say as they packed into Barney’s ancient sedan forty-five minutes later, “Maybe we’ll just be gone this weekend. Maybe this’ll all just be some big misunderstanding. Maybe we’ll be gone for weeks. I can’t be sure. Are you sure you still wanna do this?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mercedes took one last look around her bedroom, and almost, </span>
  <em>
    <span>almost</span>
  </em>
  <span> decided against taking her bow and arrows with her. </span>
  <em>
    <span>I’ll be back soon enough. Plus, I’ll be with Barney, it’ll be fine.</span>
  </em>
  <span> But some instinct in the back of her mind told her that that was a lie, well, not completely. She’d be back, but not until the job was done, and that was going to take far longer than either of them would anticipate. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Forty-five minutes later, she was slamming the trunk of the car closed, and walking over to the passenger side door, and before getting in, and starting on the highway out of Charlotte for the last time. “Yeah,” she said assuredly, “I’m sure.” </span>
</p>
<hr/>
<p>
  <span>They stopped once in Maryland for food and a bathroom break. Mercedes offered to drive, but Barney turned her down. She took over the wheel anyway while he went back inside the McDonald’s to grab more napkins. He didn’t even put up a fight when he saw her in the driver’s seat. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Just keep your eyes on the road,” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Aye aye captain,” she laughed as she pulled out of the parking lot. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They’d been silent for most of the drive. Aside from the steady purr of the car’s engine, the only sounds between them had been the Mercedes’ playlist interlaced with directions from the GPS, and Mercedes’ sneezing once as they crossed the North Carolina-Virginia border. She was too antsy to sleep, and much more afraid to speak to him, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. There was too much to digest, and opening a can of worms that was more likely to explode wasn’t ideal in such confined space. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>So, they chose silence. Mercedes drove on through the night, pushing on, mile after mile, until they crossed into New York. In her mind, she should have known the actual border of the state didn’t mean immediately crossing into the metropolitan area that was under siege from some alien or blood feud between the Avengers, but it was still a little lackluster watching the same stretch of road for another hour until they crossed into the ‘New York’ that always existed in her head. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Where the hell are we even going?”she finally asked. It should’ve been the first thing she brought up when Barney punched in the address nine hours earlier, but there had been too much running through her mind to fully process it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Avengers headquarters,” he said, though his sentence was cut off as Mercedes slammed the brakes and swerved across two lanes of traffic, before parking on the far right shoulder, emergency lights blinking. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Why?” </span>
  </em>
  <span>she snapped. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Jesus </span>
  <em>
    <span>fuck</span>
  </em>
  <span> Mercedes,” Barney gasped, grasping at his chest, “Can you not fuck up my brakes? We do need to get back y’know,”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Why are we going to see the Avengers?” she snapped again. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“My brother’s one of them, well, he was when they were still a thing,” he explained, words steadying as he caught his breath. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mercedes sighed and ran her hands through her hair. “The </span>
  <em>
    <span>Avengers</span>
  </em>
  <span> Barney? Seriously?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Although world leaders had given professional speeches about how grateful they had been to the remaining Avengers after the Battle of Wakanda, the public was, understandably, less than pleased about the toll their ‘valiant efforts’ had rewarded the globe with. Aside from the young Wakandan princess that did press conferences with the UN every once in a while, and James Rhodes now running for vice president, no one had heard, seen, or so much as caught wind of where any of them were. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was strange to process in her mind that she was heading toward them now, and possibly the man that had killed her father. Her hands went slick with sweat and her head was pounding. She groaned, and punched the steering wheel, accidentally honking the horn. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“This would’ve been good information to know nine hours ago,” she said quietly. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I knew you wouldn’t come if I’d told you,” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Mercy, Mercy me you’ve gotten so big. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Her eyes were wide open, and still the image burned its way into her vision like a nightmare. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Mercedes, I know this is hard for you,” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Don’t,” she interrupted. She shifted the car into drive, and pulled back onto the freeway. This time of night, it was empty and she didn’t even have to look before merging. “Let’s just get this over with,” </span>
</p>
<hr/>
<p>
  <span>Two hours later, the car was parked at the start of a long, winding driveway. There was a security booth and guard rail blocking it from entry. Well, entry by car. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“C’mon, can’t be that far up the road,” Barney said. Mercedes cut the engine, and while Barney walked around to hop the rail, Mercedes took the keys and walked to the trunk of the car. “You seriously think you’re gonna need that?” he asked when he saw her walking back around with her bow slung over her shoulder, and buckling her quiver to her hip. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We’re walking into the headquarters of the most powerful people on earth, and possibly your maniac murderer of a brother, uninvited, in the middle of the night. I’m not taking any chances.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Mercedes, c’mon, I know these people,” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Know ‘em well enough to call ‘em and open this thing up?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Barney huffed a sigh and said, “You’ve got a point.” Before leaving the car, she reached into the backseat and grabbed the knife out of her backpack. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They started down the dark path, illuminated only by the flashlight on Barney’s phone. As they hiked up the first portion of the road, Mercedes was concerned about the lack of light, thinking it could possibly be abandoned, but then she remembered how much the world didn’t really need heroes anymore. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>After Wakanda, crime, well, the type of crime the Avengers would handle anyway, had halted. Even those Hydra goons that had been on the news every week for five years had gone off the radar. Biding their time most likely, but no one needed to go knocking on the Avenger’s door anymore. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Good. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Mercedes thought, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Not like anyone useful ever answers. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was ten minutes of walking before any light came onto the path. The driveway opened up, and they were standing before a large glass building. The end of the driveway leading up to the entrance was lit up with garden lights. It wasn’t much to give them a view of the inside, which was completely dark. But just as they made their final steps to close out their trip, a motion sensor light went off, illuminating the entire front of the building. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“This place got a doorbell?” Mercedes asked. She walked slowly up the remaining pathway, Barney trailing closely behind her. They hadn’t even made it to the front door before another light came on, this time from inside the building. Through the glass, Mercedes saw a tall, slender woman, so pale, her skin glowed like another source of light in the blackness of the doorway. With her red hair, Mercedes thought of the candelabra from </span>
  <em>
    <span>Beauty and the Beast. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She opened the door and said, “Well, this is a sight for sore eyes,” If it was meant to come off as sarcasm, it was a weak attempt. Her voice barely lifted above a whisper, and with the puffiness around her eyes, it was clear that she was putting up a front for whatever sadness she had pushed down to open the door. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Nat, we need your help,” Barney said. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The woman, Nat, flicked her eyes from Barney, Mercedes, and then to the quiver on her hip, before sighing, and said, “Yeah? Join the club,” and stepped aside to let them in. </span>
</p>
<hr/>
<p>
  <span>Mercedes wasn’t a child, but for some reason, Barney was suddenly treating her like one. There hadn’t been another word said about why they had driven all this way other than Natasha’s ominous comment at the door. She had ushered them inside, showed them to the living room, already strewn with several blankets and pillows, way more than was needed when Natasha was seemingly the only person living at headquarters. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You guys can sleep here for the night,” Natasha said, trying to fluff up the two pillows that had been placed on the arm of the couch. “We can talk more in the morning, but I’m sure you’re both,”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’ve gone longer without sleep, and Barney’s a caffeine addict,” Mercedes had interrupted, “We can talk now.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Mercedes,” Barney huffed, “One, that’s not a goal to beat, two, no I’m not,” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Okay, well, even if those are, or aren’t true statements,” Natasha spoke up, “I’m beat. We can talk in the morning. You two do whatever,” and she left without another word. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Barney and Mercedes stood apart in the living room for a few more moments, neither one of them speaking until the sound of a far off door closing travelled down the hall. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Five minutes would’ve been good enough,” Mercedes whispered harshly. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Mercedes, not now. Just go to sleep, and we can talk in the morning. The rest’ll give you some time to form some coherent thoughts,” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’ve got plenty of coherent thoughts now!” she started to shout, but at least wanting to mind her manners, brought her voice down to a harsh whisper, “Besides, what if she’s working with him? Isn’t that the Black Widow?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Barney had already kicked off his shoes and was grabbing one of the blankets and making a sleeping pad on the floor. “She’s not. Trust me. I know her, and I know my brother. They haven’t spoken in years.” He flopped onto his makeshift bed, and rolled away from Mercedes, “Remind me to move the car in the morning,” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“But-”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Sleep tight Mercedes,” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And that was that. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She stood silently, arms swinging by her sides, for a few moments. She was too wound up to go straight to sleep. So, she decided to snoop instead. Following Barney’s lead, she took off her shoes, and got under the blankets on the couch, eyes wide open as she watched Barney’s back on the floor. After a few minutes, she heard him snoring, got off the couch, and went down the hallway that Natasha had gone through. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>As she trailed along, she tried each door that she passed. All unlocked, much to her surprise. Not that there was anything interesting in any of them. Bedroom, bedroom, laundry room, game room, why did they need a bathroom with stalls? </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It shouldn’t have surprised her that every room she went into was also empty. From the looks of it, Natasha was the only person here. But what made her skin prickle was the </span>
  <em>
    <span>way</span>
  </em>
  <span> everything was empty. Each bedroom she peered into still had clothes on the floor, unmade beds, and even a beer can in the third room she’d looked in. Each one frozen in the moment that their last occupants had been there. As if all of them had said “I’ll get it when I get back home,” before vanishing into a cloud of dust, along with the other couple million people they had been fighting to save. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Mercy? </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The slam of the door snapped her back to attention. She hadn’t even realized she’d been pulling back as she fell into that memory. She shook her head, and continued her trek down the halls, mind void of her initial goal. Instead, she wandered aimlessly, trailing her fingers along the wall, trying to focus on any possible imperfections in the texture. Lingering too long with her thoughts would throw her back to that day...to those people…..G-d, all those people. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I fucking hate it here,”  Mercedes said aloud. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“-yeah me too,” an unknown male voice responded. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span> For a quick moment, she cursed herself for not bringing anything down the hall to defend herself with. No matter all of Barney’s training, she would be a shit fighter against her target. It wasn’t too far of a stretch to say that her run-ins with bullies wouldn’t do much good against a full fledged Avenger. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“G-d, this is,” Natasha said. Mercedes looked up and realized she was standing in the doorway of an office. Natasha was pacing back and forth in front of a hologram of a man, whose back was to her. Relieved that she hadn’t been caught, she stepped out of view and squatted beside the entrance, listening. “I thought the Accords was a mess, but this is a fucking backed up sewer in the middle of a fucking flood,”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That’s gross,” the man answered.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Natasha sighed before saying, “Rhodey I just, I need someone here with me. I thought he would’ve come back by now, but </span>
  <em>
    <span>clearly,</span>
  </em>
  <span>” she stopped. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Okay just, just tell me again, I’m still caught up on the </span>
  <em>
    <span>brother</span>
  </em>
  <span> thing,” Rhodey said.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Clint’s creepy brother drove up from G-d knows where, I coulda sworn he was hiding out in San Juan or wherever, and has this, this </span>
  <em>
    <span>kid</span>
  </em>
  <span> with him,” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So he’s an uncle too?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Gross, no. If </span>
  <em>
    <span>Barney</span>
  </em>
  <span> had kids, I don’t even wanna think about it,” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>So there was more to the puzzle that was Barney Barton. Mercedes knew that, but from the way Natasha was talking about him, Mercedes felt that she should defend him in some way. Come out of hiding and demand why she was using that tone, that utterly nauseated tone, when she said Barney’s name. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Okay, so Clint’s brother’s non blood-relative kid is here because…”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Natasha paused for a long moment before answering, “He’s killed someone again. Gotta be a relative, or a friend, or whoever the fuck is close enough to this girl to get her and Barney to come all this way. Barney wasn’t exactly clear when he called me earlier, and I’ve been too scared to go through the news again to get any sorta context,”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ah, so that was what the run back inside McDonald’s was all about. Mercedes rolled her eyes, of course he hadn’t told her. There seemed to be a lot he wasn’t telling her, well, </span>
  <em>
    <span>hadn’t </span>
  </em>
  <span>been telling her. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I knew I should’ve gone looking for him,” Natasha continued, “If I had, none of this would be happening,” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Nat, you don’t know that,” Rhodey said gently.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>I don’t?”</span>
  </em>
  <span> her head whipped up, eyes filled with tears, “I don’t know my own fucking best friend well enough to keep him from a fucking,” she waved her hands around wildly, “On a fucking murder spree? Some fucking friend I am then.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Best friend, huh?” Mercedes whispered. It was a bit of a funny thought to her. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>For all of her teen years, these people had been raised up as martyrs that could do no wrong, until they did, and the fallout from it was of biblical proportions. Hearing Natasha describe her father’s killer as her ‘best friend’ was so preposterous. They were human after all, and this was a strange, invasive reminder. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She huffed out a laugh, but rolled her lips together to keep herself from being heard, though she wouldn’t have cared if she was discovered. Worst that would happen is that Natasha would either send her back to bed, or they’d talk through the night about the reason she was here. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You can’t hold yourself responsible for what he’s doing. Especially not after what he did in Mexico, you know that,” the man assured her. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>So she wasn’t the only one Barney’s brother had torn apart. Was she the only one burning a path for answers? A large part of her hoped not. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I know, I know. But, she’s so </span>
  <em>
    <span>young</span>
  </em>
  <span> Rhodey. She’s just a kid, and I could just see all of that anger, all that grief, all that </span>
  <em>
    <span>determination</span>
  </em>
  <span> in her face, and that was two minutes after she’d walked through the door.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You think she’s gonna go after him?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I know she is. I think Barney’s been teaching her. Can’t think of any other reason that he’d know a girl that he’s not fucking,” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The two chatted for a few more minutes, Rhodey assuring Natasha that there wasn’t much she could do unless she went after Clint, Natasha berating herself for not going after him sooner, before Steve said he would call to check on her later, and when Mercedes peered around the corner again, the hologram was gone. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She got up and stretched before walking directly into the office. Natasha was sitting at the desk with her head in her hands, fingers gripping so tightly into her face that her nails left indentations on her cheeks. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re a terrible sneak,” Natasha said. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah, well, Barney’s teaching me archery, not espionage,” Mercedes answered plainly, walking right up to the desk. “How do you know him anyway?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Natasha forced out a short laugh, “Thought you might’ve researched me a little bit. He told me you googled him or something. And you got all of that about him from a dumb carney name on a rusty knife?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So he told you all of that but not why I’m here?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She shook her head, “No, he told me plenty. I just didn’t want Rhodey to worry more than he already is. Also he still works for the government, if I name dropped you and you go off and do something stupid, he’d be liable.” Natasha looked Mercedes in her eyes sternly, “You aren’t going to go off and do something stupid, are you?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mercedes shrugged her shoulders, “Depends on your definition of stupid,” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Going after an assassin when you’re a slightly talented archer with no other skills? I’d call that pretty fucking idiotic, but my resolution this year was to be nicer to strangers,” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So then, let’s not be strangers so you can give me the mean ass truth,” Mercedes said. She stuck out her hand. Natasha looked at her tentatively before shaking it. "I'm Mercedes Short," </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>"Hi Mercedes, I'm Natasha Romanoff,"</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>"Great, now we're not strangers. So tell me what you know about Clint Barton.”  </span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>giving myself five weeks to finish this and if i don't do that then i'm probably gonna delete this but thanks for reading anyway!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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